Various types of frying pans and cookware are known in the prior art. Some are devised to facilitate inversion of foodstuffs and enable users to easily invert, mix, and rebound foodstuffs from the pan edges back to the pan center. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,398,655, issued to Smith, includes an overhanging lip devised to direct inversion of foodstuffs subjected to forced travel up the overhanging lip and thereby “flop over”. However Smith teaches a circular cross-section with a lip overhanging the actual base of the frying pan. While foodstuffs accelerated up the circular cross-section are inverted thereby, said foodstuffs are yet deposited (with some force) on the horizontal pan base. In Smith's invention, foodstuffs necessarily lose contact with the pan during inversion and travel through the air at least partially to land on the horizontal surface of the pan base. Delicate foodstuffs (such as eggs) are therefore readily broken by such impact unless care is effected in subjecting the pan to the “sudden jerk” Smith necessarily requires (col. 2, lines 80 and 97).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,497,174, issued to Cacace, necessarily requires a curved side that terminates “substantially normal the cooking surface” (col. 2, line 26). Foodstuffs shunted up the side are forced into the air to enable rapid sautéing and deglazing.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,829,984, issued to Leibowitz, likewise makes use of a circular cross-section, devised to “flip” foodstuffs and deposit them back in the center of the pan. Further, Leibowitz's “lip” is “imperforate”, that is, perforated to enable draining of the pan by tilting the pan in the direction of the lip whereby liquid is caused to drain through the perforations. Importantly, Leibowitz's motivation for aerial inversion (that is inversion effected without contact maintained with the pan) is set forth when he describes “[t]he lip 20 has a vertical radius of curvature less than that of the rim 14 (the vertical radius of curvature of the rim 14 being infinite in the case of a rim 14 extending exclusively vertically upwardly from the base 12)” whereby “the lip 22 then reverses the travel direction of the food and causes it to invert (see dashed arrow D [FIG. 2] so that what was once the top surface of the food now rests upon the base 12” and “so that the base 12 is in an appropriate position to receive the flipped food” (see col. 3).
Thus neither Smith, Cacace, nor Leibowitz are motivated to maintain contact of foodstuffs with the pan proper throughout inversion of the foodstuffs to gently invert foodstuffs by rolling them over and deposit them, not on the pan base, but on the sloped portion of a first arcuate section before returning them to the pan base. Neither do they teach, therefore, a multi-radius curve cross-section to effect such rolling inversion of foodstuffs whereby even delicate foodstuffs (such as eggs for example) are gently inverted by rolling over without impacting the pan base.
Smith, Cacacae, and Leibowitz all require abrupt motions, jerking, and sudden forcible action to effect the inversions of foodstuffs their structural limitations enable. See for example Leibowitz col. 3, lines 58-61; Cacace, col., lines 29-34; and Smith, col. 2, line 96.
The present invention, therefore, presents useful improvements in the cooking arts by enabling rolled inversion of foodstuffs with minimal dexterity and force applied to the pan proper.